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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Sometimes things are exactly as they seem... except at my house

Like getting caught cheating on a test or finding out your guy has been using you for status, money, a good time- whatever.

It's awful at the time. In retrospect you're not happy about the experience, but the experience taught you a lesson.

Cheating is bad... When your guy says he's working late, needs a loan til payday, wants you to wear THAT dress and your hair THAT way when you go out...

These are lessons learned you take with you into the next phase of your life.

Such a lesson was learned today by TeenBoy. He's 14, and by definition that means he knows EVERYTHING, or at least he THINKS he does.

Being TeenBoy, he is often oblivious to the messes he creates and that he should actually clean them up.

Toward this end I decided to teach him to clean the kitchen floor.

I use a floor steamer and thought it about time he learned to use the cleaning appliances too.

He filled the water reservoir and turned it on.

I was vacuuming and didn't pay much attention to his method.

When ready, I showed him how the steam would loosen the sticky mess from his cereal milk, while the microfiber pad would grab the dirt from the floor.

It didn't work.

A puddle of water trailed after the steamer instead of a cloud of steam. Realizing the pad was already soaked, I removed it in order to put the dry one on and, VOILA'!

A stream of scalding hot water shot through the air, across the room toward me. As it hit my wrist I turned my back to the jet stream, causing it to shoot across my shoulder blade and down the back of my arm. I managed to angle it so the water didn't get TeenBoy in the face.

Apparently, TeenBoy had filled the reservoir by placing it under the running water at the kitchen sink.

Thus causing the water to overflow into the steamer head, NOT out of the unit.

When the water heated up the excess water shot out in a highly pressurized. SCALDING stream.

TeenBoy learned two lessons today.

1- the easier, faster, less complicated way, IS NOT necessarily the better way.2- Sometimes Mom has a very good reason for doing things the way she does, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

I learned a lesson today as well...

Behind the beligerence and attitude TeenBoy gives me, he loves me and can't stand to see me hurt.

After spryaing my wrist and back with cold water at the sink I peeled my t-shirt up, the blistered and burned skin peeling away with the shirt.

Seeing the tears in my eyes, TeenBoy stopped, sucked in a deep breath and ordered me to take a cool shower. After which, he gently applied aloe gel to the 2nd and 3rd degree burns for me.

He then finished the floor, using the microfiber mop and water the old fashioned way, without a word about how long it took.

TeenBoy even said he never realized how hard cleaning the floors was, or how long it took, and cleaning the house was harder than he thought.

Although burned and in pain, I am grateful for the time spent with TeenBoy today. And for the lessons learned by each of us...

AND, I figure I can get 2 or 3 days of slave labor out of this... right?